


The Shadowed Sun

by Lockadee



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Fairies, Happily Ever After, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Minor Shallura if you squint, Tam Lin-ish, Very much not Shallura though, Will o' Wisps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-11 05:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15965534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockadee/pseuds/Lockadee
Summary: There is a forest on Atlas’s border where no light filters through the canopy, where fairies dance through the night and will o’ wisps lead the unwary astray. When visiting the kingdom’s outlying villages, Prince Shiro is drawn beneath the woods’ shadows and into a world forgotten by time and myth alike. But there are no guests in this forest, only prey, and he has until sunrise to escape the twisting labyrinth of trees, lest he be trapped there forever.





	The Shadowed Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! I'm a couple of days past my posting date, but at long last I present my entry for Sheith Big Bang 2018. My partner for this event was [Marissa](http://myssiesart.tumblr.com/), who not only makes beautiful art, but is also an angel for putting up with me, even though working with me is like herding cats. You should absolutely check out the piece she made ASAP—it's gorgeous. You can view it [here](http://myssiesart.tumblr.com/post/178145341998/concept-art-for-lockadee-s-fic-for-the)!
> 
> Half of my love and mountains of gratitude go to [Alex](https://desperately-wants-to-see-you.tumblr.com/) for being the hero I always need, but never deserve. Thank you so much for beta-ing!
> 
> The other half of my love, as usual, goes to [dimplelegacymila](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimplelegacymila), who's spent much of the last week sprinting with me as I panicked trying to get this done, and is the best cheerleader anyone could ask for. She also has a work in this event, so if you have any interest in a Violet Evergarden AU, her's is just a [click](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15996461) away!
> 
> Finally, I'd like to thank you, the reader, for spending your time here with me and my fic. This one's been a ride to make, and I hope you enjoy reading it. If you have any questions/comments/concerns/noticed my typos, please let me know! You can find me in the comments section or at [my Tumblr](https://lockadee.tumblr.com/).

To say that a story happens but “once upon a time” is to presume that is had not happened until that point, nor has it happened since. And for fragile, fallible human memory, which sees time like an ever-flowing river rather than the tides that ebb and flow by the will of a capricious moon, this may seem to be the case. But even those things which you cannot recall may still be remembered. For why else would so many children fear the dark? As a gesture of good faith, and in the hopes that repetition will aid in remembrance, I grant you now a cautionary tale. While it is not the first of its kind, nor likely shall it be the last, it nonetheless begins like many a bedtime story. That is to say, with “once upon a time”.

Once upon a time, there was a kingdom of gold and sunlight, whose borders stretched as far as the light of dawn. There, the sky was always blue, and acres of grassy, green plains rolled in the gentlest of breezes. In the kingdom’s heartland, farmers never wasted away, were never hungry or without work; their fields forever washed in yellow as their wheat stalks swelled with heavy grain. Joyful whistling accompanied the pound of horse hooves as traders passed by on well-trod roads, their carts kicking up clouds of red dust as they made their way to market. Earthy scents like loam and straw gave way to flowers, fruit, and newly baked bread the closer they journeyed to Atlas’s capital city.

It’s said that the sun shined brightly on the crown of Atlas, and none who had walked the cobbled capital streets could call the kingdom anything but blessed. And at that heart of all its grandeur, behind the city center’s lime-rinsed walls, lived the prince.

Prince Shiro, fair of heart and fair of face, was the eldest of the king’s children. A fixture within the city, his people loved him for the both the consistency of his daily patrols and the alacrity with which he would rescue the occasional kitten that trapped itself in a tree. His hands, though ringed in rough calluses from many years of sword practice, were otherwise soft and kind, whether he was removing a kitten from a high branch or escorting an elderly matron home after sundown. His life was one of peace and contentment, and while he longed to explore the far reaches of his kingdom, his duties within the city walls—and his father’s orders—kept him close to home until he finally came of age.

It was not until the winter of his twentieth year that Shiro was allowed to follow the restless stirring in his heart. Then, he rode due north, away from the warmth of his familiar rivers and fields and into chilly, deep green forests and high hills limned by gray, clouded skies. He followed a stream that branched from his river, riding on and on, watching the sky grow darker and colder, until at last he spotted a small speckling of straw thatched roofs.

Meager harvests had crippled the northern border towns, and hunger loomed like a specter clinging to the villagers’ ever thinning shoulders. Ashen skin pulled taut over sharp bones and faded into the gray, dusty roads and motley wattle homes so that the town looked near absent of people.

Shiro’s nails dug small crescents into his saddle bags. These were his people too, but they and their tight-lipped frowns and worried eyes were a far cry from those who lived nearer to the city, whose smiling faces were all he’d ever known. As he pulled small sacks of grain from his bags, handing them out to the thinnest villagers first, Shiro asked them why they did not hunt for game or forage for roots and berries from the forest that lay just beyond the river. With such dense greenery so close by, surely they could have found something filling to supplement the grain he had brought, something that could help tide them through until spring.

The oldest men bowed their heads and turned away from him, as if each of his questions were a sword stroke. The youngest burst into wailing sobs. None answered him, no matter how many times he asked, or how many supplies he handed out. Fear and shame clung to the shadows in their eyes, stealing away any favor he tried to buy.

Long hours later, the mystery remained, even as Shiro’s retainers shuffled him away to retire for the evening with the setting sun. But thoughts of the villagers plagued the prince’s sleep, and there would be no rest for him that night. Instead of wasting his time tossing and turning in his bedroll, Shiro strapped on what he could of his armor and went to patrol the town. He didn’t expect to find much trouble in such a rural area, but perhaps he might scare away a mangy wolf or scrawny fox that had wandered too close.

He completed his circuit of the village proper before the cold could even seep through his heavy cloak. The route was far too short to leech the restless energy twitching in his limbs, so he made his way down to the river, hoping that its gentle burble might lull his anxious mind. Along the bank, moonlight trickled through a thick fog, illuminating it in cobwebs of resplendence. Shiro paced along the sandy shores, the low crush of gritty sand beneath his booted feet and the soft rush of the river the sole sounds in the quiescent night.

Until the scream.

A woman’s voice, high and shrill as a sparrow’s cry. A frigid splash of water soaking through Shiro’s trousers—movement before thought. A second shriek. Then silence.

Shiro was alone, save the echoes of his own squelching shoes as he bounded forward into the depths of the forest. From the moment he stepped beneath the canopy of twisting trees, he was enveloped by darkness. Every other step, his feet tangled in gnarled roots. Branches clutched at his face and snagged his clothing. The forest itself seemed to push him away; at the same time, it seemed to swallow him, the scream, and the one who had made it. But Shiro was unafraid as he marched on, and on, and on, drawn further into the fathomless shadows.

Finally, his frustration boiled over as he crashed through yet another snarling underbrush he hadn’t seen in the impenetrable black. The last vestiges of the scream had faded, and he no longer knew which way to turn. He did not give in though, could not give in. Good princes did not abandon the frightened or the lost.

Slamming his fist against the solid growth of boles blocking his path, he shouted, “Let me through!”—having half a mind to draw his sword and hack his own way.

The woods replied.

Small lights flashed and frosted the air beside him, sparkling like crushed glass, weaving through the trees like a beckoning silver thread. “Thank you,” the prince breathed to shivering leaves as he chased the newly illuminated trail through the waiting twists and bends.

No road marked the forest floor, the ground carpeted in a thick coating of slick, rotted leaves, but Shiro followed the gilt trees like guiding stars deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the woods. And just as the prince began to despair that he would never find the scream’s owner, he heard a hitched noise, a prelude to a sob. He turned and saw the dim glow of fire floating in the distance.

It was small and weak, like watery sunlight, calling him far off the path he trod. Though Shiro was loathe to leave his chosen road, he had been running for so long already, and still he had not found the woman in distress. He drew in an icy burst of air, then expelled it, short and sharp. Hesitation did not pave the way for great deeds. He threw caution to the wind and followed the ghost light away from the forest's trail.

He raced along, until his lungs could no longer claw breath and his face flushed with blood that would do more good in his numbing fingers, but the orb of fire stayed anchored in the distance. It was as if he chased the North Star, always guided, but never near. And the further he traveled, the darker the woods became. Leaves rustled more quietly—even those he crunched under foot—and he could scarcely see the glittering trail from which he’d strayed. It seemed a void reached out for him, and he willingly walked into the pit.

Then, all at once, he stumbled, crashing to rough stone on his hands and knees. A blinding light flashed, a bow twanged, and for a moment, the darkness of the forest faded. Shiro blinked, and the ghost fire was gone. A rocky crag and rushing river roared at him from beneath the bend of his bruised knees. His fingers curled around a cliffside’s jutting edge, and he scrambled back, shivering, soul chilled as though Death himself drummed cold fingers up the divots of his spine.

As Shiro scuttled away from near disaster, his hands skated across something too impossibly smooth to be of the forest's making. He tilted his head up and met the gaze of a woman too impossibly beautiful to be human.

The material beneath his hand was the hem of her diaphanous white gown, so soft and bright, it was as if clouds had been spun into cambric solely to clothe her. Silver hair spilled like moonlight down her back, locks and braids alike parted by a pair of lacy, crystalline wings. Her eyes twinkled like stars, like the glittering path folly had led him from, and in her raised hands, she held a nocked ivory bow. All at once, Shiro realized that this fairy woman had shot through the dark and saved him from the ghost light's snare.

"Are you all right?" she asked, slinging her bow upon her back and offering him a hand. The warmth of her voice eased the tension in his spine, its timbre dark and sweet like mulled wine.

Shiro grasped her hand and pulled himself to his feet. "I am now, thanks to you. I am Prince Shiro of Atlas. To whom do I owe my gratitude?"

The woman smiled, small and mysterious like a slivered moon. "You may call me Allura." Her fingers brushed his shoulders, banishing dust and straightening his cloak. Heat suffused the prince's face in a brilliant, burning blush. "For what reason have you come to this forest, Prince Shiro? It is not a friend to strangers."

"I heard a woman scream; I wanted to help her," Shiro replied.

"That is admirable," said Allura as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, "but are you sure it was a maid and not a trick, an echo of the forest? _You_ are the only human I have seen tonight."

Shiro lips pulled into the well-worn grooves of a rueful smile. "It may have been a trick, but I would sooner be made fool than willingly leave someone to harm."

Allura tilted her head, sharp eyes searching his face, weighing his worth. "Your kindness is commendable and a credit to your kingdom, but what would you have done had I not been here? The fall from the cliff would have killed you."

“I would have lived, or I would have died. Thankfully, we won’t find out which, since Fortune saw fit to grant me a saviour.”

"You flatter me," replied Allura, as she turned away, a pretty pink blooming in the apples of her cheeks.

“I think…” she continued, glancing back at Shiro, her eyes sparkling with mirth, “it is I whom Fortune favors, dear prince. Please,” she offered her hand once more, “won’t you join me this evening? My people and I are to feast tonight, and you must be tired after your ordeal. I would be quite pleased if you would dine with us.”

“If it’s no trouble, I’d be glad to join you. I can hardly refuse such a gracious invitation,” replied the prince, taking Allura’s hand as she led him once more down the woods’ star-embroidered path.

 

\---

 

When bathed in lucent radiance, and escorted along unburdened trails by a sure-footed guide, the forest did not seem half so sinister as it had during Shiro’s mad flight. The trees that had bent and ducked to block his every step instead twisted and swayed like drunken revelers. The air was still cold, but refreshingly so, and each breath was laced with the soothing scent of peat. Every so often, Shiro would catch sight of a red ember at odds with the calm, clear blue of the fairy-magicked branches, but Allura’s steady hand, tucked into the crook of his elbow, kept him moving forward, safe from the forest’s tricks. And deep in the heart of the darkened woods, after walking through a solid core of tree trunks, they emerged into a spacious, hidden hollow ablaze with opulence.

Splendor dripped from glowing fairy lights in the canopy, down to lush, verdant mosses that blanketed the floor. Beneath the eaves, fairies dined and danced, the lights dappling the their clothing like stars brought down from the heavens. Vivid notes of bright fruit and dark soil perfumed the air, underscored by a current of burnt sugar. Musicians floated high above the dancers, but their music stayed tethered to the earth, ringing out like veins of gold thrumming deep within the high hills. And when the music swelled, couples leapt to soar with them, their stained-glass wings brushing against whomever they could catch, tinkling with a trembling hum, time suspended for a single, delicate second before they tumbled back down like a shower of petals blown from a tree. The dancers’ skirts bloomed as they spun, and hair the colors of spring flowers tangled in a wind of vernal freshness that swept through the airy ballroom.

“Welcome to the Fairy Court of Altea, Prince Shiro," said Allura as she lead him into the great hall. "You honor us with your presence.”

“The honor is mine,” replied Shiro, though his hushed voice was drowned out under peels of giddy laughter and plucky lyre melodies.

They strode past crowds of bowing fairies, who parted around them like reeds bending before a breeze, but one man, with teal marks highlighting his cheekbones and a matching set of clumsy wings that knocked into any fairy too slow to dodge, bounded towards them instead of away.

“Your Majesty!” the man cried. “I’m so glad to see you’ve returned safely.”

Allura dropped Shiro’s arm and went to lay a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Thank you for your concern. I had an encounter with a wisp—” the man frowned and opened his mouth to interrupt, but Allura continued on blithely, “—but both my guest and I have come through unscathed.”

“A guest!” The man’s face brightened as he caught sight of Shiro. He smoothed down his deep blue shirt and slicked back his wild riot of hair. Shiro bit down on bubbling laughter, unwilling to offend his hosts, and let the man gather his affected gravitas.

But before the man could speak any further, Allura cut in. “Yes, a guest, and a very important one at that. Could you please set a place for Prince Shiro beside my seat?”

The man straightened like a soldier before dropping into a deep bow. “At once, Your Majesty.”

“‘Your Majesty’?” asked Shiro, after the man had marched off.

“Ah, well, yes,” said Allura, refusing to meet his eyes. One hand came to rest on the elbow of her other arm, and her skirts swished softly as she shifted her weight. “I _am_ the Fairy Queen. But,” she turned beseeching blue eyes on him, “I’d prefer it if you would call me Allura. Please.

“Allura it is.”

“Thank you,” said Allura, gracing him a smile reminiscent of a full-bellied cat’s.

By the time they reached the long, dark-stained oak dining table at the far end of the hall, a gleaming silver chair and dishes had been set beside those of pinkened gold. Delicate, filigreed roses fluted the golden seat’s back and vines of shimmering wisteria roped around the handles of similarly fine knives, spoons, and forks. A serving fairy pulled out the silver chair for Shiro and took his cloak; he had no need of it in the enchanted warmth of the Fairy Court. He untied his sword for decorum's sake, but left it resting against the back leg of his chair. Allura's golden chair pulled itself out for her when she drew near. Plain, empty wooden seats surrounded them, though some ways down the table, the occasional fairy dabbed at a sweat-dampened brow, resting their feet from the dance, and refreshed themself with trays of food and drink brought forth by low-hanging branches. It was the most privacy Shiro had ever experienced at a party. Back at home, the Crown Prince was always in high demand to charm this or that important lord’s progeny. The difference was… novel.

Allura waved her hand, and branches curled to place platters of drink and fruit before them.

"You kingdom is beautiful," said Shiro, watching several branches slip away seamlessly into the greenwood.

"Thank you," said Allura with an indulgent, if empty smile—the sort of smile one gave to inane comments about how fine the weather was that day. She then turned to the remaining branches and a picked up a decanter filled to the brim with a frothing green liquid and poured out two measures into their precious metal cups.

"It's traditional fairy wine," she said when Shiro swirled his glass and sniffed the drink to test its bouquet. It fizzled like summer firecrackers and smelled like spring sunshine. He took a thoughtful mouthful, letting the effervescence burst on his tongue. He blinked, startled, and took a deeper draught, then a third, even deeper one after that.

"Each sip..." he started.

"Tastes different?"

Shiro nodded. "The first tasted like... blue. Lapis blue. And the second like the clink of crystal goblets in a toast. The third..." he trailed off as a flush crept across his face. The third had tasted like a lover's kiss. He was grateful that Allura didn't press him to finish his thought and took another drink to settle himself, letting the liquor turn his limbs to honey.

His eyes slid over to the still untouched banquet. Trays tilted beneath the food's weight—tiny cakes topped with sculpted sugar flowers; thick slices of flat breads and rounded loaves, all peppered with herbs and slathered in clotted cream; and piles of vibrant fruits that had no business being fresh in the dead of winter. A fat pomegranate sat on the edge closest to him, its flesh split open and its glittering, garnet seeds dripping with juice. He had half a mind to grab it when Allura finished her drink and stood.

"Would you like to dance?" she asked.

Shiro watched the dancing fairies weave between sky and earth, watched as their wings fluttered and feet skimmed over the moss floor so lightly that they left no footprints behind. "I don't know the steps" he said, toes curling in his leaden leather boots, "and I don't have wings to help me learn."

"That won't be a problem. Come, dance with me.” She offered him her hand.

Shiro considered taking it, but a delicious languor had suffused his limbs and he sank further into his seat instead. “I’m afraid—” he yawned, only just covering his mouth “—I might be more tired than I’d thought. I should head back to the village soon, before someone notices I’m gone.”

It struck him then that he didn’t know how long he’d been gone. Time was hard enough to tell in the forest, where the thick canopy hid the moon and stars from sight. In the Fairy Court, where magic never let the light die out, the passage of time and movement of celestial bodies was inconsequential.

“One dance, then. And if you are too tired to return this evening, you can rest with us until the sun rises. No one should note your absence until after dawn.”

When Shiro still hesitated, she settled a small, slim hand along his jawline, and lifted his face to meet her hopeful eyes.

“Stay. Dance with us.”

Her skin was soft and smooth when they touched, her voice dulcet and lilting when they spoke; her steps would be sure and graceful when they danced. Shiro raised his hand, and reached for the one still waiting for him.

A clatter like thunder jarred him from his seat. A solid plume of smoke erupted near the hall’s entrance.

“Wisp!” someone shouted, and Allura hissed.

“Wisp?” asked Shiro, blinking slowly as he rose to his feet. On the outskirts of the trees, a light flared, but it was only just brighter than the fairy light glinting off of the banquet’s silverware.

“A will ‘o wisp,” Allura replied, voice heavy and eyes hard. “They’re ghost lights that lead people away from well worn paths and into the arms of death. It was a wisp that nearly killed you.”

Bubbles popped in his sparkling wine, and Shiro remembered the incessant pull of watery light, the roar of a river beneath a cliffside that crumbled under his toes. “Someone should stop it,” he said as he grabbed his glass and downed the last of its contents. The last sip tasted like courage.

Allura grimaced. “We’ve tried, but wisps are tricky and always manage to slip away.”

Shiro grabbed his cloak from where hung on a tree branch. "It sounds like you could use some help."

Allura raised her brows. "Do you truly think you can catch something that even the Fairy Queen cannot?"

"We'll never know unless we try.” Shiro paused, his hands hanging slack on the newly tied knot of his sword belt. “Please, let me repay you for your kindness in saving me. I need to redeem myself for nearly being tricked earlier."

"As you say.”

A grin slid across Allura’s face, sharp and sly like a fox's. “I would be glad to see you skills in action, Prince Shiro—that is, if you can keep up."  She snatched her bow from beside her chair and thrust it into the air.

"Let the hunt begin!" she cried and the Fairy Court echoed back the call with whooping, raucous laughter.

 

\---

 

The hunting party poured from the Court's hollow, and the fairies' drumbeat footsteps set Shiro's blood thrumming apace. Though the fair folk kept their wings folded, they seemed to glide beneath the branches and skim across the roots that had once ensnared Shiro. But with glitter-dusted fairy wings lighting the way, he was not lost this time, and Allura's moonlight hair and starlight wings shone brightest of them all.

Still, while weighed down by his armor, he could not match the fleet-footed fairies in their own forest for long, and he quickly fell to the rearguard. Sweat drenched the back of his neck, and his breath grew short as he panted, straining to keep up. His stamina had waned in the wake of his first run through the forest's gauntlet, and a muzzy haze blurred the edges of his vision. He shouldn't have finished the wine. He shook his head to clear the fog, and a gust of wind blew his damp hair off his sticky brow.

There was a moment, just one, where Shiro let his eyes slip closed as he luxuriated in the wind's respite. Without sight, he could hear the wind whistling, muted though it was under the hunting party's din. It hissed in a thousand strangers’ voices: _Trick_ — _Prince_ — _Kill_ —reverberating in unnerving echoes.

He shook his head again, like a dog coming out of water, but he couldn’t stop the short hairs on his nape and arms from prickling. Definitely shouldn’t have finished the wine.

A fluting fairy voice called out from ahead. "There! To the right!"

"Archers!" Allura called back and the full squad took aim at a faint, red glow in the distance.

Though their precision was impressive, the fairies were too impatient. They let flickers of light and shadow trick them, make them aim for where the wisp had been rather than where it would be. Shiro cursed his own crossbow, sitting useless by his bedroll back at camp.

At that moment, a blackened branch dropped from above and cracked across the skull of the daffodil-headed fairy standing two steps before him, bow drawn. Her shot flew wide as she collapsed into a heap. Shiro, having no knowledge of fairy medicine, left her to be tended by her kin, but scooped up her quiver and bow and crept around the main hunting party’s flank. With the others rousing such a merry racket, the wisp was sure make a break for the only chink  outside the main trail in the forest’s armor. Shiro found some overgrown shrubbery, concealed himself inside it, and waited for the wisp to come.

It should have taken only seconds, yet those seconds stretched into eternity. Each blink made his eyelids grow heavier, and heavier, and heavier, until they drooped. Each even breath, in and out, in and out, in and out, eased him further and further into a trance. While Shiro waited for the wisp, sleep was waiting for him.

Then, a light cut through the encroaching dark, and adrenaline spiked through his blood. There—the wisp’s steady glow shone stark against the ephemeral glimmer of fading fairy magic. Shiro took aim patiently, letting a warmth like noontime sun spread through him and memories of daylight and shifting shadows guide his hands. He fired.

The softest rustle of leaves seemed to alert the wisp; its flames guttered away from the bolt. But though it was a being of light, it reacted the same as any flesh-based animal—too slowly—and the arrow grazed its side. Fire couldn't bleed, but light leaked from the wound and dripped onto the forest floor. Shiro stepped out of the bushes and reached for the wisp, but the creature flared up. Its heat seared his eyes and scorched the fingers of his reaching hand.

When blaze died, Shiro opened his eyes, but still could not see. The wisp had fled, and the forest was even darker and colder without it. The fairies hadn’t seen him slip away and must have continued the chase in another direction; he couldn’t hear them holler anymore. His breath seemed so very loud and so very alone. But as he continued to blink and his eyes adjusted once more to the darkness, he spotted the feeble light the will 'o wisp had bled dotting the nearby forest floor. And there, only a few steps away, another drop. The makings of a trail.

Pushing through the dense underbrush, Shiro followed the golden path of light, paying no heed to the growing distance between himself and fairy hunting party. Then, all at once, the forest’s resistance vanished, and he stumbled into a small clearing.

Overhead, moonlight—real, true moonlight—spilled from a gap in the canopy. The first gap he had seen in the whole wood. A tiny hole in the skyline, perhaps the width of a single tree’s crown, small enough that if Shiro lifted his hand, his palm would block out the light. But Shiro left his hands sitting slack at his sides, and the moon sat low and heavy in the sky, full beams of light streaming in through the break to catch on the lithe shape of a man.

Or at least, something that _looked_ like a man.

Even in the brightness of the glade, the man’s skin itself held a luminosity that drew long shadows on the planes of his face. Sweeping tendrils of hair, like wisps of smoke, brushed against the high arches of his cheekbones and tangled into sooty lashes. His gleaming eyes pinned Shiro’s heart to its rattling birdcage, their brilliant hue reminiscent of the sun seeping through the city cathedral’s stained-glass windows. They smoldered like banked embers.

For the second time that night, Shiro was struck with the urge to chase fire.

“What… are you?” he breathed.

A knife-edge cut of teeth poking out through a twist of lips too vicious to be called a smile set Shiro’s stopped heart pounding. Made his chest feel brittle, like too hard a beat would crack open his ribs, and the man before him swung a battering ram.

“Drop the bow,” the man said, his voice the hoarse, thready whoosh of wind through the trees.

“What?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you try to shoot me again.” Sparks sputtered around the ends of his fingers.

Shiro’s eyes tracked a flash of color burning through the veins in sunless arms to a dim, red glow at the center of the man’s chest. Several inches below it, slashed skin wept weak light and glistening, sap-sticky blood. The wound was shallow, the sort an arrow’s glancing blow might leave.

“You’re the wisp,” said Shiro.

“I’m Keith,” the wisp replied.

Shiro inched his hand towards the hilt of his sword, wary of the trickster who’d already tried to kill him once that evening, yet Keith’s stance was loose and easy. Shiro had no wish to court disaster, but folly could follow just as easily from being too willing to resort to weapons when words would do. His hand fell away from his sword. He dropped his bow and opened his mouth; Keith was faster.

“Don’t trust the fairies,” he said.

Shiro paused. He knew little of the wisp, the fairies, and their fractious connection, but the fairies had rescued him. Keith couldn’t possibly think that Shiro would abandon those who had helped him.

“Why should I trust _you_?” he asked. “The fairies have been nothing but kind, and their queen saved my life when you would have ended it.

Keith scoffed and prowled closer, gliding through the space between them. “ _The Fairy Queen_ saved you. You really believe that? Would you wager your life on it?” He stopped, close enough that Shiro could see specks of ash freckling his cheekbones. Eyes bright with blistering scorn locked onto Shiro’s. “I never intended to kill you. If I had, you’d be dead,” Keith said, punctuating his point with a prick of nails against a vulnerable gap in Shiro’s armor.

Shiro couldn’t fathom how Keith had spotted the seam at his hip. The finest craftsmen in all of Atlas had hammered out his plate, and its weaknesses were near-invisible in the bold light of day, let alone in the impenetrable darkness of the woods. Keith dug his fingers in a little more, and Shiro tensed, remembering the sparks that had so recently burned from their tips. He’d been careless. Though Keith looked unarmed, and though he’d yet to attack Shiro directly, that didn’t mean he was harmless or that he wouldn’t strike. And at this range, Shiro wouldn’t be able to swing his sword even if he’d had it unsheathed.

“I tried to save you. I tried to get you out. The fairies are dangerous, and they hadn’t seen you yet. I’m surprised you’re not dead already now that they know.” A snapping twig pulled Keith’s attention away, but when nothing else happened, he leaned back in. “If you don’t leave now, you’ll be dead by dawn.”

The bushes rustled and Keith clenched his teeth, shouldering past Shiro as he whispered, “Leave this forest, before she kills you the way she did the others,” then bolted into the underbrush.

Across the way, fairies poured into the clearing the way spring rain melts winter’s last snow, and Shiro remembered too late why they’d been hunting in the first place.

“Prince Shiro, what happened?” Allura cried, pushing to the front of the crowd. “That was the wisp, wasn’t it? Why didn’t you capture it?”

Dazed and staring into the distance, Shiro replied, “He didn’t seem to want to kill me. He had every opportunity, but took none of them.”

“You know you cannot trust the wisp,” snapped Allura, her strident tone shocking Shiro from his stupor. “Just because it hasn’t killed you yet, does not mean its intentions are pure. Have you forgotten what it did to my Court, what it nearly did to _you_?”

“He said he was trying to help me.”

“Leading you to a cliffside is a strange way to help. _We_ have helped you. If not for me, you would have died.”

“He said that that was the way out.”

“And you believe it?” Allura asked. Her gaze narrowed, eyeing the flush that crept over Shiro’s face. “Why are you defending it?”

“I just think he deserves a chance,” Shiro said, striding forward with supplicant’s hands. “I don’t know what happened between you, but maybe it’s time to leave history in the past where it belongs.”

“You’re right,” replied Allura, “you _don’t_ know what happened. You know nothing of this forest or its bygone days. You can’t even make your way through the woods without getting lost.” She sneered, “ _The cliff is the exit_. Honestly. I’d like to see you try to leave without my help.”

“All right,” said Shiro, a curious cadence coloring his voice as he extended a hand. “If I do, will you give him a chance?”

“Are you offering me a wager?” asked Allura, head cocked and eyebrows raised as she stared at his outstretched arm.

“I guess I am.”

She smiled, vicious and snagging like bramble thorns, and took his hand. “Fine. If by sunrise you leave this forest without fairy aid, I will give the wisp a chance. However, should you fail, you are to stay here and help us hunt until after the wisp has been captured and dealt with, no matter how long that takes. Do we have a deal?”

Shiro thought of his kingdom, of the village, of the people he’d let down if he didn’t succeed and disappeared for an unknown length of time. He thought of Keith, who never actually hurt him, even though Shiro had made him bleed. There was nothing for it. He just had to win.

“We do.”


End file.
